Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More...On Collecting

This publication examines the collecting impulse in its variegated manifestations, raising fundamental questions about why we collect and whether it matters what we collect. Surprising and eccentric, it features three utterly different collections: Pictures (and other contemporary art objects) from the renowned Robert Shiffler foundation in Ohio; the stunningly beautiful Patents—the Smithsonian’s collection of patent models submitted to the US Patent Office in the 19th century; and finally Monkeys—from a private, New York-based collection of approximately 1,600 sock monkeys.

Running the gamut from high art to the unmapped inspirational dregs of American culture, Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More...On Collecting draws on such diverse talents as Ingrid Schaffner—adjunct curator at ICA Philadelphia—and artist Arne Svenson, whose photographs of the sock monkeys combine the haunting and the beautiful. Also included are such artists as Janine Antoni, Willie Coles, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christian Marclay, Alan Rath, Jason Rhoades, Kay Rosen, Jessica Stockholder, and Lisa Yuskavage, among many others.

Texts by Werner Muensterberger, Ingrid Schaffner, and Fred Wilson. 

Published by Independent Curators International, 2001, hardcover, 72 pages, 10.25 x 8.5 inches.